[fa.info-vax] MicroVax

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (01/10/85)

From: stew%lhasa.UUCP@harvard.ARPA

From a recent article in Computer Technology Review by three senior
engineers from DEC:

"At the CPU board level, the performance of the MicroVAX I is superior to
the VAX-11/730 at about half its power consumption and printed circuit
board space.  Depending on the application, the performcance of the
MicroVAX I is about 60% of the VAX-11/750 at about 20% of its cost.
   An original design constraint that influenced that influenced a number
of decisions in the design process was a short time-to-market.  The main
results were the selection of an existing systems package and extremely
tight limits on the design of the CPU."

The article continues with quite a long, technical discussion of the
implementation.  It claims a 70% cache hit rate, further improved by
block-mode transfers and an instruction prefetch queue.

Stew

info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (01/11/85)

From: decwrl!mcdaniel@UCB-VAX (Gene McDaniel)

I think most of the net debate about MicroVax pertains to the MicroVax II
chip set.  I believe some material has been published about it, however I
don't have the references.  MicroVax I is an existing product, and I am not
sure if there is a product annonucement about MicroVaxII or not.  Gene